Customer Story: How Fort Collins Comic Con Streamlined Operations to Bring $390K+ to Its Community Yearly

Since 2015, Fort Collins Comic Con has raised $155,000+ for youth literacy and mental health. They moved their event planning to Eventeny and saved 15-20 hours!

FORT COLLINS, CO, UNITED STATES, November 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — A library fundraiser that became a community institution:

Fort Collins Comic Con started as a joint project to help the library. The Poudre River Public Library District’s annual book sale brought in about $40,000. When the building that stored those books was sold, the library faced a year without that money.

Nick Armstrong, who had done marketing consulting for the library, met with Paula Watson-Lakamp from the library and Nathan Scott from Fort Collins Zombie Crawl and the three dreamed up a small con that could have a fundraising component. The team expected 100 people. Instead 1,500 showed up, and the first event raised $15,000. The next year it raised $30,000, enough to cover the library’s lost revenue and the cost of replacing it.

The con grew to the point where it had a life of its own and the Library team encouraged Nick to make it its own nonprofit. Today it runs under Howdy Neighbor Events, an independent nonprofit with Nick as executive director and a team of super-geek staff who make the event possible from volunteer coordination to programming and operations. It draws more than 3,000 fans and 150+ vendors each year, and has raised more than $155,000 for youth literacy and mental health.

“We thought maybe 100 of our closest friends would show up. 1,500 people showed up that first year.”
Nick Armstrong, Executive Director, Howdy Neighbor Events

Before Eventeny:

Homegrown tools that ate the team’s time.

Several people on the team are web developers, so for years they built their own systems. Volunteer scheduling ran on custom WordPress code. Loading one event’s volunteer slots took 10 to 15 hours of team time, and managing them before the con took another 5 to 6.

Ticketing was riskier. During busy booth and badge sales, a caching bug on their web host showed buyers other people’s credit card details as they typed.

The host wouldn’t fix it, so the team shut the checkout down.

Every hour spent patching software was an hour not spent on artists, fans, and partners.

“Your entire team is trying just to put on the event, and you don’t [want] to worry about software and all the rest of that stuff.”
Nick Armstrong, Executive Director, Howdy Neighbor Events

The solution:

One platform that protects access for everyone!

Fort Collins Comic Con moved to Eventeny in 2024 after comparing several options.
“We did look into a number of different software options for our event, and y’all were the best fit by far.”
Nick Armstrong, Executive Director, Howdy Neighbor Events

Ticketing, volunteer management, and artist applications now live in one place. For this con, that’s more than convenience. Its whole model is built on keeping the doors open:

– A family of four can attend for $100 or less
– Anyone who can’t afford a badge can work a 2–3 hour volunteer shift for a free weekend pass
– Booths stay around $200–$250, with five set aside for student and first-time artists paired with mentors

That volunteer-for-a-badge approach only works if volunteer scheduling runs smoothly. Moving it into Eventeny took a 15–20 hour chore off the team’s plate.
Artist jurying moved too. A review that once took about six weeks is now a documented process every new staff member learns on day one.

“The switch to Eventeny, especially for volunteering, has made that effort substantially easier.”
Nick Armstrong, Executive Director, Howdy Neighbor Events

The impact:

More room to serve the community

With operations in one system, the team has the opportunity to spend its energy where its members each shine: on what Nick calls creator literacy. That means teaching kids that their stories can be told, are worth telling, and matter to the wider community.

Lending the platform to a student-run con

Compass, a local charter school, runs its own comic con for 300–400 kids. Students learn how to connect with artists and build booths, but student-led projects don’t have budgets for software. So Fort Collins Comic Con lends Compass its Eventeny license, trains the staff, and answers their questions. Many of the same artists apply to both cons, so everyone works from tools they already know.

“We have this great software partner that we use, Eventeny, and we would love to have you be able to borrow this software under our license.”
Nick Armstrong, Executive Director, Howdy Neighbor Events

A superhero for every kid
One Compass student told Nick they were Indigenous and had never seen an Indigenous superhero, story, or artist. “You’re the Comic Con guy,” they said. “Figure it out.”

The team found Rafael Maldonado Bad Hand, an Indigenous artist whose original superhero is based on his daughter. Rafael partnered with Fort Collins Comic Con and the team commissioned him to design that year’s posters and stickers. Soon every coffee shop, game store, and open window in Fort Collins showed an Indigenous superhero, drawn by an Indigenous artist. Indigenous representation by multiple artists is now a regular occurrence at the con.
“…an Indigenous superhero designed by an Indigenous artist telling an Indigenous story because one kid asked us. And that is why we continue to do this.”
Nick Armstrong, Executive Director, Howdy Neighbor Events

Lightsabers at the symphony

Nick’s team spent years trying to partner with the Fort Collins Symphony, but the timing never seemed to line up just right. When it finally happened right after COVID, the con helped bring the symphony’s pops concert to life.

The orchestra played John Williams. The USS Tiburon, a large Star Trek fan group, arrived with a full transporter and a Borg alcove. Dr. Erin Macdonald, a local Star Trek science advisor, read the famous “space, the final frontier” opening. And just before the Star Wars crescendo, the con team had everyone crack glow sticks wrapped like mini lightsabers and hold them up.

The symphony was thrilled to reach a new, younger audience. Now its musicians come to the con every year to lead two panels on how they play pop culture music, and kids sit on the edge of their seats.

“Never when we started this thing did we think, oh, this is going to be a road to artistic endeavors for some kids. But it absolutely is.”
Nick Armstrong, Executive Director, Howdy Neighbor Events

A con that sends business back to town

Fort Collins doesn’t have a convention center, so the con runs at the Fort Collins Senior Center and works hard to collaborate with local partners. Its estimated economic impact is $390,000 to $425,000 a year, based on Fort Collins data from the national Arts & Economic Prosperity 6 study.
Badge pickup at local shops. Fans collect their badges at comic book and game stores. That gives those shops about two months of extra foot traffic.
Perks that spend locally. Every badge includes $10 to spend at Chipper’s, a local bowling, arcade, and entertainment venue.

Sponsors who show up. Instead of fixed sponsor tiers, Nick builds custom partnerships. The city’s broadband utility, Fort Collins Connexion, runs the game room with a local game store and serves as the title sponsor, The Alliance for Suicide Prevention runs the con’s chill room, the Colorado Ghostbusters run a STEM education escape room, Ward Orthodontics – a local doctor who shows up with volunteers and in cosplay every year, and Colorado State University experts have led panels like the science of Jurassic Park.

“We want you to participate and be fully engaged with the con, because when you do, the audience loves it and they’ll remember it.”
Nick Armstrong, Executive Director, Howdy Neighbor Events

Jessica Kane
Eventeny
+1 5862314207
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